vintage
Vintage content about families throughout history; all about ancient ancestors, heirlooms, royal families and beyond.
A 60's Tale
A 60’s Tale 1962, Friday, 2:15 pm. Barbara sits in her car, her long dark hair hangs limp in front of her face. She stares out the window at nothing as she replays that last forty five minutes in her heard. She walked into her estranged husband’s offices, as she walked through the beige, dim lit corridors towards his office she noticed the sympathetic looks from the secretaries, even other business men. How could they know? Did they really know who Stanley is? She reached his office. Time seemed to warped and grow foggy. The words “keep the damn house, do what you want with it, sell it. But don’t contact me again” ring and blast through her ears. A traffic warden taps on the hood of her car, bringing her back from her thoughts. She begins the slow drive home. In her rearview mirror she looks at her son and daughter’s clutter on the backseat, wrappers from rhubarb and custards litter the floor and sandy footprints line the interior. Barbara smiles to herself thinking the freedom they must feel, her smile fades when she thinks of them for too long.
By Charlotte Gould3 years ago in Families
A 60's Tale
A 60’s Tale 1962, Friday, 2:15 pm. Barbara sits in her car, her long dark hair hangs limp in front of her face. She stares out the window at nothing as she replays that last forty five minutes in her heard. She walked into her estranged husband’s offices, as she walked through the beige, dim lit corridors towards his office she noticed the sympathetic looks from the secretaries, even other business men. How could they know? Did they really know who Stanley is? She reached his office. Time seemed to warped and grow foggy. The words “keep the damn house, do what you want with it, sell it. But don’t contact me again” ring and blast through her ears. A traffic warden taps on the hood of her car, bringing her back from her thoughts. She begins the slow drive home. In her rearview mirror she looks at her son and daughter’s clutter on the backseat, wrappers from rhubarb and custards litter the floor and sandy footprints line the interior. Barbara smiles to herself thinking the freedom they must feel, her smile fades when she thinks of them for too long.
By Charlotte Gould3 years ago in Families
The Good Name
John Cody Wallace III Arizona, 1872 He crawled over cool red rocks and into the sun, and suddenly he was in the open and could see for miles. The dust and wind howled around him, and the shades of morning painted the canyons in soft hues of red. "I think I see it," Tom Kelly said on his stomach beside him. He was holding a pair of wood and brass binoculars tightly to his eyes, his floppy hat blowing in the desert wind. "Way out there, just to the left of the horizon," Kelly handed the binoculars over to Wallace.
By Benjamin Cooley3 years ago in Families
What we carry inside
I sat on the floor of the basement, my hands covered in the thin layer of dust that comes from looking through old photos and letters. Happily strewn across my lap were the treasures I’d found in this box: grandpa’s harmonica, amber jewelry galore, a handwritten log of winning lotto numbers from the 1970s - my grandma’s doing. She died when I was young.
By Karina Palukaitis3 years ago in Families
Familiar Places That You Feel As If You've Seen Them Before In Your Dreams or Childhood
Lately, there have been these "nostalgia-core" or "dream-core" accounts on the popular app Tiktok, and they post videos of picture compilations that show places of odd areas that we might have last seen when we were children. But it does not just show ordinary pictures of places, they are commonly known as Liminal Spaces. When you look at these pictures, they might give you this nostalgic, odd, yet comforting feeling that you have seen that place before whether it was in a dream, or even in your childhood.
By Salaar Khan3 years ago in Families
Tales My Father Never Told Me
I guess my earliest recollection of my father's exploits occurred when I was about eight or nine. As was the family custom to always sit down to dinner promptly at 6, I can remember in joyous excitement when my father recounted the days when he was young. The "good old days" as my father so fondly recalled. There was this one evening when the dishes were cleared as my father lit another Camel cigarette leaned over and said let me tell you a story of how I managed to get through school. Leaning back in the comfort of his high back chair as he exhaled smoke, " Son, back in the fall of '23 was the best year yet. I still have my raccoon coat upstairs in that closet to the left. The one I wore to all the football games that my roommate Red Grange played. The galloping ghost they called him." As I sat quite still leaning forward to here every word I remember how the gleam in his eye shown as he remembered his glory days of a bygone era.
By Dr. Williams3 years ago in Families
Treasure
Growing up in the 70’s meant camping in the summers with my family. And I mean real camping, not “glamping” as people call it these days. We didn’t drive around in an RV visiting RV campgrounds. We pitched an Army surplus tent and all 6 us bedded down.We slept in sleeping bags, not on air-mattresses, so we always prayed there weren’t little (or big rocks) under us. And we learned to never touch the side of the tent if it was raining, because you’d get wet, for sure. Sounds terrible? It wasn’t. There was always a pond to fish in, a pool to swim in, and forests to roam. We cooked s’mores around the campfire and told stories. Often we went with other families so we had friends or we made friends with other camping families. We went to farms and learned how to milk cows and ride horses and just about every time we’d come home with a new barn cat.
By Meg Lagares3 years ago in Families
The Little Black Book
The little black book sat in the chest that belonged to her great grandmother under old quilts, stained letters, and black and white photographs. The black book sat untouched for many, many years. Gloria sat curled up on her couch, it was a gray January morning perfect for sipping coffee in her pajamas. She sat appreciating the quiet and admiring the chest she inherited from her great grandmother when she was a little girl. Gloria closed her eyes and sipped the hot coffee from her warm mug as she thought about the time she was given the chest unbeknownst to her the secrets and fortune that lay hiding inside, untouched, and unknown, waiting for her to find; a little black book. She remembered helping her Grandmother and Mother clean out her Great Grandma Nadine’s retirement home after she had passed, she was ten at the time. They packed everything in boxes. Some items such as pillows and blankets were donated while other things such as her kitchen mixer, glassware, and a few antiques from Europe were passed down to certain family members. Gloria took another sip of coffee and thought about the last time she saw her Great Grandmother Nadine. Nadine was born in England and had lived a long adventurous life. She remembered how her hands felt when she held them while her great grandma lay resting on her death bed. She thought about the last thing her Great Grandmother Nadine ever said to her. It was so hard to make out the muffled words that shakily came out of her tired body, but finally Gloria faintly heard “the book belongs to you”. Gloria remembered her grandmother and mother going over the will and heard her Mother tell her that the chest her Great Grandmother had in her family for generations was going to be given to her. Gloria opened her eyes and looked again over at the chest; it was a Victorian antique made in England. Gloria kept in the corner of her living room. One of the old quilts her Great Grandmother had made was folded and draped over it giving it a cozy feel to the living room. Gloria stood up and walked over and picked up the old quilt and held it up to her face feeling the textured of fabrics sown together by hand and then slowly placed it next to her on the couch. Gloria sat on the floor and gently opened the Victorian chest, she loved the smell of old oak and loved tracing her fingers over the cold brass metal that framed the outer walls of the humped back lid. She thought of it as a treasure chest, she chuckled to herself and thought that in a way it was. She moved the old quilts and keepsakes aside and felt around at the false bottom of the chest for the little leather piece of fabric that when pulled revealed a hidden compartment. The items revealed were a stack of letters bound together with a soft blue ribbon addressed from a name that read Getty. Right next to the letters there was in the hidden compartment was the little black book. Gloria picked it up knowing it could fall apart any moment if she was too forceful with it. She sat back on the couch and opened the cover of the book while holding the bind together with her other hand. Under the cover was a folded-up letter written in her Great Grandmother Nadine’s handwriting. As Gloria unfolded the letter she recalled the moments of her finding the secret compartment that guarded the book years ago. She had memorized the letter from her Great Grandmother but still loved opening its secrets. Gloria read the letter again silently mouthing the words tracing the letters with her fingers, “My Dear Gloria, you have found my fortune. It belongs to you and only you. I’ve always admired your heart. Your soul and spark remind me of your Great Grandfathers. Do what you will with this fortune, I know you will not use it in vain. Yours truly, Nadine.” The little black book was Great Grandmother Nadine’s Diary from the year 1910. Gloria knew things about her Great Grandmother that she would take with her to her grave. Nadine had a secret life no one, not even her husband knew about involving a love affair and oil during the great depression. She had met a man by the name of Jean Paul Getty at the University of Oxford in England. They had travelled around Europe together before departing their separate ways forever in 1912. Gloria didn’t like getting too deep into the details of the diary when it came to Getty, but she liked knowing that her Great Grandmother was in love. There were letters hidden in the compartment of the chest between her Grandmother and Getty. The letters were mostly about oil and how he and his family were investing in an oil Field Holding in Oklahoma. Getty had been sending Nadine money, and lots of it. The money grew and grew and eventually stopped coming once the letters stopped arriving in 1915 when they both had met their life partners and had started having children. Nadine kept the money in the bottom compartment of the safe, afraid to even take it out knowing that no one would believe her if she told them where she had got it from, she also didn’t want to break her husband’s heart, she never told him she had been in love before him. So, she just hid it waiting for the right opportunity to reveal it to the right person, Gloria.
By Ashley Haltom3 years ago in Families